Tuesday, January 16, 2018

Putin’s ‘Hybrid Peace’ More Threatening to Ukraine than His ‘Hybrid War,’ Portnikov Says

Paul
Goble

Staunton, January 16 – Vladimir Putin’s
rhetoric about Ukraine has changed in order to curry favor with Russians in
advance of the presidential poll, but his approach on the ground has not
changed, laying a potential trap for Ukrainians and meaning that his “hybrid
peace” is even more dangerous than his “hybrid war,” Vitaly Portnikov says.

There is the great danger that Ukrainians
and their supporters elsewhere, the Ukrainian commentator says, will focus on
what Putin says rather than on what he continues to do and thus decide that
Kyiv should make concessions to someone who has made none except at the level
of propaganda (radiosvoboda.org/a/28973563.html).

In
the weeks between his televised meeting with the Russian people and his more recent
meeting with media editors, Putin has changed his tone in comments about
Ukraine in remarkable ways.He is no
longer talking about the need for regime change in Kyiv but instead about the
requirement for improving relations between the two countries.

But
“nothing in the situation around Ukraine has changed,” Portnikov ways.“What has changed is Putin himself, above all
from the point of view of rhetoric.”The
Kremlin leader wants to present himself as a peacemaker because that is what the
Russian people want given the burdens his military efforts have placed on them.

That
does not mean that Putin is interested in “any peace” with Ukraine, the
Ukrainian commentator says, but only that “the hybrid war which Putin has
carried out against Ukraine for more than three years must be replaced with ‘a
hybrid peace,’” something “much more dangerous than a hybrid war.”

On the one hand, a
peace even of this kind will mean that hundreds if not thousands of people may
survive the conflict who otherwise would not. But on the other, Putin’s goal
now with his peace offensive as in the past with his military moves is to
secure “the destruction of the Ukrainian state itself.”

The features of Putin’s “hybrid
peace” are already clear: willingness to end military actions in the Donbass
and even pull out Russian forces but no willingness to allow any foreign
peacekeepers from entering that region. Moscow will insist that Ukrainian
control will be restored after Kyiv fulfills the Minsk accords – in short, “not
in the near future.”

Such ideas will win sympathy in Russia
but more important in Germany, France “and possibly even in Washington.” That
will create problems for Ukraine but so too will be the continuing Russian
influence in part of Ukrainian territory, maintaining it as “a suppurating
wound on the body” of the country.

While this is going on, many in Western
elites will begin to insist on lifting sanctions on Russia: “If there is no war
anymore,” then they shouldn’t be maintained.Still more, Ukraine should adapt itself to this new reality.But that is only one part of the problem,
Portnikov says. The other is inside Ukraine, as Putin fully understands.

“In Ukraine itself, ever more loudly
are sounding the voice of htose who call for reaching an agreement with Russia
and ‘listening’ to the Donbass: there is no war, and only ‘the ineffective and corrupt
Ukrainian authorities, which justify their unwillingness to carry out reforms by
referring to the conflict with Russia, are interested in confrontation.”

“Russia will spend enormous sums on
Ukrainian politicians and the imitation part of ‘civil society’” both directly and
via “their Western friends which live on the very same Moscow means.” That could
affect the next Ukrainian elections, out of which may arise “a surprising bloc
of open collaborationists and pseudo-‘patriots’” committed to a deal with
Russia.

If that occurs, Portnikov says, “then
the Minsk accords will finally be realized. The Donbass will become a state
within a state. Crimea will disappear from the Ukrainian agenda. And the new president
of Ukraine will go to Moscow fully ready to sell out Ukrainian sovereignty.”

This is
Putin’s plan for “’a hybrid peace.’”And
it is critically important that Ukraine not fall into the trap the Kremlin
leader is laying.“It is very important
to understand that peace will not be hybrid. In a hybrid war, real people die;
but in ‘a hybrid peace, real states are destroyed.” Moscow has no interest in
the survival of Ukraine.

What
Ukrainians must remember is that the West pays attention to Ukraine only when
it is fighting, Portnikov says. If it stops fighting to try to make a deal with
Putin, the west will ignore it; and then Putin will win not one victory but
two.